This is a large-sized, hardback book and is richly illustrated with full-colour plates, graphs and tables. There are an instructive introduction and conclusion, and each of the main chapters is devoted to an aspect of estate development and/or decline, some of which provide illuminating pictures of the landscape in northern European territories. The narratives of the chapters also explore regional differences within country boundaries and investigate and explain political inputs.

The introductory chapter sets out the rationale of the volume, which is to begin a series of publications on the topic of country houses. This, the first in the series, is based on papers given at international conferences held by the European Network for Country House and Estate Research. The introduction leads on to some valuable work providing insights into landed growth and decline, with occasional fascinating detail. Each chapter ends with a helpful bibliography. The Danish estate is shown to have been a tool of communication with owners stamping their domination through use of markers such as architectural patterns, and plaques inside churches – a scene familiar to those who know the British landscape. There is a repetitive consideration of the different sorts of landowners interwoven with many statistics. Jonathan Finch goes on to discuss regional variations in estate creation in England, with detailed discussion of data confirming the complexity of estate returns. The subsequent chapter considers Swedish manors but involves too many tables containing confusing data. The lengthy conclusion begins to make things clearer but introduces yet more detail. A chapter on the ‘Dukeries’ (an extinct English term) reviews the organisation and operation of capital farms in the area that bridges Scandinavia and Germany and brings in more complex terminology and definitions.

The later parts of the book feel like a different proposition. A chapter on the nobility in south-west Germany uses an incident in a church in 1918 to introduce an exploration of the influence of the lower nobility and includes an interesting section on land division prior to Napoleon, subsequent landowner/peasant tensions and finally Nazi reorganisation. This is followed by an exploration of Dutch estate growth and decline, which at the same time explores and explains the changing Dutch economy. The final main chapter is a fascinating review of how the religious Reformation of the sixteenth century gave Denmark a strong grip on Norwegian estates, and how the instigation of an absolute monarchy in the seventeenth century created a new nobility and had a profound effect on estates. Finch concludes with ‘a new agenda’ for estate studies. He acknowledges the similarities among the noble elite and their landed properties in the different countries and identifies gaps that need to be filled. Here he sees the need for a global context.

The editors agree that terminological differences in the countries under consideration could lead to confusion – and they do, in several places. There are also a few mistakes in the use of the English language, some questionable definitions and a number of contradictions. The illustrations are superb and help to explain the high price of the volume.